The Android Debug Bridge (ADB) provides an interface between an Android device and a PC. The connection can be made using USB or Wi-Fi (if on the same network). From this XDA guide:

The internal structure of the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is based on the classic client-server architecture. There are three components that make up the entire process.

  • The client, i.e. the PC you have connected to your Android device. We are sending commands to our device from the computer.
  • A daemon (adbd), which runs commands on a device. The daemon runs as a background process on each device.
  • A server, which manages communication between the client and the daemon and runs as a background process on the PC.

Typically, to install ADB one must install the Android SDK, which is >400 MB in size. It is sufficient to install the Android SDK Platform-Tools, but that’s >90 MB. For someone not looking forward to full-scale Android development, this seems like an overkill (it is). This is where the Minimal ADB comes in. Found in this XDA thread1, it provides all the necessary files in a neat package of ~3 MB. I use the portable version, as I don’t really need to install the program.

Working with adb

To start working with adb we need to go to Developer Options2 in Settings and enable USB debugging. Now, we can fire up a shell and type

adb devices

(or ./adb <commands> in the folder where adb is, if not in PATH.) which shows the devices connected via ADB. Initially, there will be none. On a fresh start, this will start the daemon:

* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
List of devices attached

Now if we connect our phone via USB to the computer, we would prompted for permission to debug on our phone (if the adb server is running - if not, run adb devices). If allowed, our device will show up with a serial number on the list.

Connecting via Wi-Fi

It is also possible to connect to the device via Wi-Fi.

  1. On Android 10 and lower, the initial setup requires a USB connection. According to this guide,
    • We must first connect the device via USB.

    • We set the device to listen on a port (here, 5555) for a TCP/IP connection:

      adb tcpip 5555

      and disconnect the USB cable.

    • We need to find the IP address of the phone on the network. This can be usually found at About phone > Status info > IP address.

    • We can now run

      adb connect ip_addr:5555

      to connect to the device. If successful, adb devices will list the device.3 To connect to this device anytime in future, we just need to run the connect command with the ip_addr at that time at port 5555.

  2. On Android 11 (and higher?), no USB connection is required. Following this guide,
    • We must turn on Wireless Debugging in Developer Settings on our phone. On opening the Wireless Debugging settings, we will have the option to “Pair device with pairing code”, which will show a 6-digit pairing code alongwith the IP address of the phone and a port to connect to.
    • Run 
       adb pair ip_addr:port

      using values from last step. We will be asked for the pairing code next. Once entered, pairing should succeed and our phone should list the name of the PC under Paired devices.

    • Now we connect: 
       adb connect ip_addr:port

      This port will in general NOT be same as the previous one! This port number is listed under the Wireless Debugging settings. This completes the setup. Also, in this case, the port to connect to keeps changing - so when we need to connect to the device at a later time, we need to input the correct port number as well.

Note 1: If we want to disconnect, we can simply run adb kill-server. All devices will be disconnected.

Note 2: If we want a detailed list of connected devices, we can run

adb devices -l

which displays more info like the model number and device name.

We can access the adb shell by typing adb shell. This will work only if a device is connected, as the shell opens at the device root /.

Uninstalling packages

pm is the package manager of adb. In the adb shell, we can write

m30s:/ $ pm list packages

(the device name is displayed first: here m30s) to list all installed packages (the list will be long!). A few Linux commands also work in the shell, hence we could, say, grab only the apps with the word ‘samsung’ in it:

m30s:/ $ pm list packages | grep 'samsung'

Finally, we can use

m30s:/ $ pm uninstall –k --user 0 <package-name>

to uninstall packages.4 The -k switch keeps data and user cache. The --user 0 option uninstalls only for the current user (of the device).

  1. This thread was last updated on 02-09-2018 and the ADB version packaged is old (v1.0.39). Here’s a thread that provides Tiny ADB and Fastboot was updated on August 2021 and uses v1.0.41 (size: ~7 MB). ↩

  2. One needs to reveal the Developer Settings by tapping on Build number in phone software information 7 times quickly in succession. ↩

  3. Interestingly, this method does not require turning on Wireless debugging in the phone. ↩

  4. Without rooting a device, we technically cannot uninstall system packages using adb. This is because one does not have write permissions on the /system partition. (More on this) We hide them from the user so these apps do not run anymore. They’re still on device storage. ↩